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poverty-stricken neighborhood. I can easily recall weeks when our only food was potatoes and government-granted bricks of processed cheese. Breakfast, lunch and dinner . . . potatoes and cheese. In all fairness, I have since spent time in countries where this abundance would be reason for celebration and now understand what a blessing from God it was to have food, any food, on the table when so many in this world do not. However, that reasoning has little impact on the mind of a child or the mental pathways and habits that are formed during this most influential time of our lives.
    Over the years life improved, but only slightly. It wasn’t until I was out of high school that I lived a life completely free of government financial aid. We were “poor,” and that was a message that echoed both from our bank statements and from the innermost parts of our self-image. By the time I was ten or twelve, I had ceased to ask for anything beyond the most basic needs. The mantra in our apartment was “We don’t have the money for . . .” Regardless of the object of desire, the answer was always the same.
    Lest there be any jumping to conclusions, I want to make it clear that this WAS the reality. I had no miserly mother who saved every extra penny for her own clothing, booze or cigarettes. Mom did the best she could with very, very little. When she said we could not afford it, it was because there were not enough pennies in the cookie jar to buy bread, much less the new style of jeans, the latest record or the new Nikes that all the “cool” kids were wearing. Thus, I became used to the mantra and tried to keep my chin up despite the taunts of other kids and the deep-seated sense of being less than my peers. The only thing that saved me from serious psychological damage, at least in my opinion, was that I grew up in a home rich with love. Positive reinforcement, loving touch and acceptance were as plentiful as cash was not.
    So, starting at an age younger than I can remember now, I began my own mantra. A handful of words that represented a respite from the unfairness of our privation. For every gift-laden store window, every school trip that left without me, every trip to the secondhand store, I repeated these words: “When I grow up, I will have whatever I want.” This was the magic spell. The hope of things unseen that helped me survive on potatoes, cheese and two-dollar tennis shoes from Kmart. “Whatever I want.”
    Twenty years have passed since I became able to work and earn my own money and provide things for both myself and my loved ones that we hadn’t had for so long. What greater joy than to walk into the burger restaurant and order one . . . no, TWO . . . of the biggest burgers they had, as well as the largest french fries and the super-sized drink. To look at the menu and present myself with “whatever I want.” No one could tell me we didn’t have the money; why, I could pull the bills right from my own wallet and order everything on the menu (and sometimes it seems that I tried).
    What greater proof that the days of want and lack were gone forever—to banish that fear and self-loathing—than to swagger down the junk food aisle and grab all the jumbo bags of chips, all the Oreo cookies (and not the cheap, stale knock-offs) that I wanted and toss them into the cart? Big, colorful bottles of Coke were far more satisfying than ten-for-a-dollar packages of generic Kool-aid. Delivery pizza was expensive. Poor people couldn’t afford to have an extra large with everything on it brought to their door, right? Therefore every call to Dominoes reinforced the proof that I could have whatever I wanted. And every extra burger, every ice cream cone, every jumbo bag of chips was a time machine that whispered comfort back over the years to a little boy sitting at a worn Formica table with nothing on his plate but a baked potato.
    Every dollar spent, every mouthful of food was a silent cry that I would not spend the rest of